The Tiltboys

Russ 1987 Rafe 1987 Mike 1987 Perry 1987 Steve 1987 Dave 1992 Bruce 1993 Tony 1993 Phil 1993 Lenny 1994 Josh 1995 Paul 1996 Kim 1996 JK 1997

"... a half-dozen recent Stanford graduates and their friends, whose escapades, fueled by Rusty Nail and Green Apple cocktails, would delight Dean Martin." Smithsonian Magazine "For a few good belly laughs, read these true tales.... Amidst their PG-13-rated stories of ribaldry in Las Vegas, there is a surprising amount of intelligent discussion of poker." New York Times "... they dress in women's clothes and go to poker rooms. They think this is of great interest to other poker players. This strikes me as a rather pathetic, or at least sophomoric, attempt to get attention." rec.gambling.poker

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Monday, July 31, 2006

Tiltmom :: Another Chapter from Tales From The Tiltboys

This is an excerpt from Chapter Three, a brief glimpse into the life of Perry “The Baiter” Friedman

There is really no need to interview Perry, as the spewage is constant. If I took notes in shorthand on speed, it would be hard to keep up with the banter. ~ Amy Calistri

We get this question all the time. “Does Perry ever shut up? Ever?” After more than a dozen years of careful observation, it pains us to say, “No, he does not.” Perry is the exact same person he was 16 years ago. His jokes have not gotten better. Luckily, neither has his poker game.

We can count on Perry to provide at least one nugget of entertainment every Wednesday night, but like Waldo in the children’s books, you have to hunt for it. Perry takes the machine gun approach to social interaction, saying everything possible in the hope that something proves funny and relevant to the discussion. A few hours of Full Contact Perry is like shooting the back nine under a Vegas sun. At noon. In August. By necessity, we’ve developed our own SPF (Special Perry Filters) to screen the noise. Someday we’ll perfect the algorithms, and not have to limit the home game to one night a week.

Having Perry around is exhausting, but there are compensations. For one, Perry is an extremely bright guy. His senior year of high school, he was picked as New York State’s representative for a summer program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Here’s some vintage Perry, clever, and not very modest:

Reporter: Was it difficult to get into the program?

Perry: No. All I did was fill out an application. Sure, it was selective, but it wasn't difficult.

Perry’s intellectual genius has its uses. He’s seen every Beavis and Butthead, every South Park, and every cheesy 70’s sitcom. This makes him an invaluable reference when you need to settle a bet on, say, how many times Terrence and Philip fart while singing, Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucka.

There is no joke that Perry can’t interrupt with the punch line. He spends the first three hours of every day trolling the net for humor. We delete the crap he forwards to the Tiltboys mailing list without reading it, certain it will eventually end up in his infinite-babble conversation loop.

He’s pathologically honest -- perhaps the only Tiltboy who will readily rule against himself in a dispute at the game. And he can always be counted on as an objective judge when Paul gets caught in an angle.

Most admirably, Perry genuinely likes just about everyone -- loves them, even -- especially when they’ll listen, or (gasp!) even respond, to something he says.

Those are the small compensations. The big ones involve paper with pictures of dead presidents, and they flow from Perry’s wallet as reliably as the din from his mouth.

Of course, playing every hand, he does occasionally win a pot. A scenario from the home game:

The game: 7 Card Hi-Lo Stud, 8 or better

The cards in [ ] are the hole cards.

[6,5] 3h 4h 5h 6h Your hand
[?,?] 5c 8d Ks Jc Perry’s hand

You have bet the whole way, representing a made low hand, and a possible straight or flush for high hand. Perry has called the whole way.

Your last card, you catch a King. You bet out anyway, sure that no one can call against such a scary board.

Perry, who up to this point had called with just a pair of fives, catches an 8 on the end to make two pair, and scoops the pot.

We have an expression for this: the Fried Factor. If you make any decision in a poker game without first considering the Fried Factor, you are doomed from the get-go. This is why no newcomer -- JK, Phil Hellmuth, Jr., etc. -- can ever beat the Wednesday night game. (By the way, the correct play in the above hand is to bet your two pair on the river -- not as a bluff, but as a value bet. Perry would have called with his pair of fives had he not caught the eight.)

value bet: betting with the intention of getting called by a lesser hand; betting purely for profit; any bet made against Perry

A few years ago we became concerned about Perry’s losses. The stakes had started escalating, and Perry’s tactical response was to move in all his chips, blind, every hand. His explanation:

Why don’t I look at my cards? I’m playing Schroedinger’s hand. Notice that at the point I make my bets, there is a superposition of winning and losing hands. Clearly these “quantum odds” are far superior to my actual odds by playing normally.

In simpler terms? Looking at his cards might tempt him to fold. Poor Perry. Everybody knows that strategy only works for the Diceboy.

We designed various systems to compensate Perry for his losses, along the lines of Frequent Loser Miles. There were flat percentage refunds, and more complicated formulae for diluting his buy-in. All to no avail.

Then Steve took a page out of a parenting manual and hit upon what seemed like the perfect solution: We would force Perry to leave the table for thirty minutes every time he lost a buy-in. Putting Perry in timeout would deprive him of the attention he so desperately craves. It would also staunch his chip spewage while giving our ears a rest.

spewage: that which is sprayed, or spewed; can refer to chips or words see Perry

It was almost too effective. Next thing we knew, Perry was occasionally beating the game fairly frequently, prompting Dice to send the following email:

I propose that we do all we can to keep Perry from winning more than $300 this week. Any more positive reinforcement and he’ll be tempted to try to play well more often!

Actually, I’m not certain that it really is Perry. Did anybody notice last week that he stopped talking for a good twenty seconds during a big pot?

A few months later, Perry and Rafe sold their dot-com start-up. Perry was rich, and we relieved him from the timeout rule. He spewed back all his winnings and then some, at a rate so implausible, it was weeks before we worked out how. It seems Perry had begun folding occasionally, but only when he had a winner.

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Sunday, July 09, 2006

rafe :: Now that's a Tilter!

  

Saturday, July 01, 2006

tiltdad :: Rafe Wins a Bracelet!!

In the PLH $1500 buyin, Rafe bested 1100 other players to win first place and take home almost $350,000 and his first WSOP Bracelet.

He'll be insufferable now heh.

Great big CONGRATS Rafe.

And, you've given the rest of us hope now that we can win a bracelet too!